Europe's debt market jitters flared up again Wednesday, an ill omen on the eve of a summit where EU leaders plan to complete their crisis-fighting plan, as investors worried particularly about the near-term fates of Portugal and Ireland.

Europe's debt market jitters flared up again Wednesday as investors worried about the near-term fates of Portugal and Ireland, an ill omen on the eve of a summit where EU leaders plan to complete their crisis-fighting plan.

Eric Lotke is a lawyer and a progressive activist, not a professional novelist, but his book 2044 is, just as a novel, a far more polished performance than its Orwellian model; for one thing, the characters are more or less human, and the author is capable of making you care about their fates, which is more than can be said for Winston Smith (whom Orwell deliberately made a thoroughly uninteresting "last man") or Julia.

But no matter where they come from or how they are brought, their fates are the same: to have their bodies be reduced to commodities to be bought and sold, used and abused by pimps and johns from all over the world.

It seems to me that a potential master of our fates should be asked, first of all, not about how he imagines the course of his foreign policy, but about his attitude toward Stendhal, Dickens, Dostoevsky.